Weather men....pah!

Looking at the weather last night on the telly I realised that today would be a wash out if I needed more confirmation while kicking the cats out I noticed a lovely ring around the moon and remembered the old saying: ring around the moon means rain soon. It seems there’s truth to this saying, because high cirrus clouds often come before a storm. Notice that the sky looks fairly clear. And yet halos are a sign of high thin cirrus clouds drifting 20,000 feet or more above our heads.
These clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals. The halos are caused by both refraction, or splitting of light, and also by reflection, or glints of light from these ice crystals. Well given that it lashed it down today the signs were correct.